Memories of Frank Yates Chapter 16

Memories of Frank Yates CHAPTER 16

We entrained at Redruth, in a “Special” which went round the North of London, changing engines somewhere, because when we reached our destination, Welwyn, we had an LNER loco at the front of the train.
This was to be the place where we were to be equipped with our guns and tractors, so we looked forward to a busy, but interesting time. The camp was permanently tented and in sight of the Welwyn viaduct, over which a procession of Gresley pacifics pulled long, long, trains. The A4s were still in their pre war colours, unlike the Stanier streamliners on the West Coast which had been repainted a depressing black.
There was little time to train spot because, astonishingly, an order arrived, on the very next day, the gist of which was that Sgt. F. Yates would report to the Officer Cadet Training Unit, at Shrivenham, Wilts. I was to catch a certain train at Paddington, the very next day. There was no time to worry, I spent the evening with Bert and a few others in the local, where we exchanged best wishes for the future, and promised to keep in touch, if we could.
A short journey to King’s Cross, then across to Paddington on the tube, where, gathered on the platform, was a motley collection of artillery NCO’s, waiting for someone to “break the ice”. I was reminded of the stories in the “Magnet” when the new boys, with their brand new trunks and tuck boxes, were apprehensively waiting for the train to their public school!
The whole process, from going for interview, to going to Shrivenham, had taken 12 days and I had no idea what a change in my life those 12 days was to make. By the time we reached Shrivenham, the station before Swindon, we were swapping experiences.
We were met by a couple of trucks and two sergeants who said “Get on board, gentlemen.” Gentlemen! - the first intimation that things had changed! The barracks were magnificent, red brick, with stone facings. There was great attention to detail in the new building, the cast iron drainpipes were square, with G.R.s and crowns cast in the hoppers. We did not have time to sight- see because we were arranged into four groups, by a sergeant reading from a list. Two more sergeants arrived and we were led to our barrack rooms. My group was to be known as “B” Squad and was 14 strong. Before we entered the room, we were ordered to remove our boots and told never to wear outside footwear in the room again. The reason was obvious. The parquet floor was polished to a mirror finish, and as we found, we had to keep it polished, every day, from then on!
There were fourteen beds, around the room with a wardrobe on one side of the bed and a bedside table on the other. Our mentor informed us that we were to remove all our badges of rank, and to put a white strip of cloth round our caps. He gave us two each, so that we would have no excuse to be wearing a grubby one.” Get yourselves settled in, gentlemen, and I will be around at seven to take you to the mess hall for supper”.
There were white sheets and blankets stacked on the bed, so we made our beds and stowed our things away in the wardrobe, then had a smoke and compared notes. We unstitched our stripes, and in one case, a Battery sergeant major’s crowns. My immediate neighbour was called John Read, and he sported a badge which was not removed; a pair of RAF Pilots Wings, obtained after doing flying training with the pre-war Auxiliary Air Force. I cannot remember how he had managed to be in the Artillery, but no doubt, he told me at the time
From then on we were called Cadet XYZ etc, treated as the lowest of the low, but always called “Gentlemen” when being ordered about in a group! We were marched, with military precision, on all occasions, even to meals which were cooked and served by ATS girls. We were marched, on the first morning, to the main lecture hall to be welcomed by the Commandant, a much decorated, elderly, colonel. He started off with a sentence, which I remember vividly even now, and which made little sense to 56 civilians in uniform. “Welcome, gentlemen, to these magnificent barracks, built by Hore-Belisha, of curse’d memory” He did not say “Cursed”, he used the poetical “Cursèd”! Lesley Hore — Belisha was the Minister of Transport, responsible for pedestrian crossings with their associated “Belisha Beacons”. It would appear that, when Minister of Defence, he had incurred some enmity from the regular Army!
The colonel then went on to give his well worn lecture on “Esprit de Corps”, which was quite inspiring.
Those first few weeks were tough; we had to work very hard, on the parade ground, in the lecture room, in the gym and at polishing the floor! There was a comprehensive assault course, many of its obstacles using the brook which ran through the grounds. We usually returned from its terrors wet through, or covered in mud!
As a squad, we bonded together, companions in adversity. I remember, a night on guard duty, when, at about three in the morning, Peter Ciceri and I were having a clandestine smoke and exchanging reminiscences. He was a medical student in London but his parents lived in Rio de Janeiro. He was one of the three blondes in our squad, John Read and me being the others. That night was idyllic, a brilliant moon, a still, warm, balmy, atmosphere, the hoot of owls, the occasional GWR goods train passing, by and the faint outline of the chalk horse as we looked across the Vale of the White Horse..
During our training, we were always under scrutiny, as we to discover, much later. Exercises were never quite straight forward. Our squad officer, a Capt. Callister, took us out one morning with several Barr and Stroud range finders. These three foot long tubes used the usual split image prisms. Looking through the eyepiece, at a distant object, two images could be seen. On turning a small knob, the images could be made to coincide, and the range could be read off in a window. We compared the accuracy of the five instruments; we played guessing games, estimating ranges and checking then with the rangefinders, altogether, an interesting morning. Then the officer told us to put the rangefinders in the truck and we would walk back for lunch. As if, by chance, the river Cole, a tributary of the Thames, was in the way! There was a 12” iron pipe crossing the river at a height of two feet above the water. Captain Callister simply walked across it and turned for us to follow. No one relished the idea, but, despite our army boots, most of us managed to cross, with only one cadet finishing in the river. Then Wally Oertinger, a teacher from London, stood, petrified, at the other end of the pipe. There was no way that he could be persuaded to move and eventually we were sent off to the barracks, leaving the hapless Wally and the officer behind. We understood that he eventually crossed, sitting on his bottom and inching across. Wally had a lot of “aggro” over the next few months, because of his problem, but he “made it” to the end.
During the last week of the month’s induction course, we had to do the dreaded “Confidence Test”, a kind of assault course, jointly arranged by the OCTU’s staff and the APTC. (Army Physical Training Corps) These super fit types, wearing black and red striped jerseys, like the burglars in “Beano” were universally hated by the soldiery because they spared no back breaking opportunity to make everyone as fit as they were
Wearing our denim overalls and the regulation tin hats we set out on the assault course, overcoming obstacles like eight feet high walls, made of railway sleepers, fording the Bower Brook, the water course which ran through the grounds, to find that a pit had been dug half way across and filled with liquid mud. Traversing between two high trestles on a foot rope and a hand rope, then returning and swinging hand over hand on the foot rope. At every obstacle a couple of instructors were there to encourage or ridicule our efforts. We were very fit young men and really, we were not unduly stressed. At least, not until the last few minutes, when a tunnel running under a stone summer house, hove into sight and we ran on, chivvied by the red and black thugs, into the tunnel, from which greenish coloured smoke was billowing.
I held my breath, difficult, after having taken all that exercise, until I felt lost in the tunnel, as it darkened as it went round a right angled bend. I knew that it had changed direction because I ran into the wall. I panicked a bit and, not able to hold my breath any longer, took an involuntary deep breath. A terrible burning sensation hit my lungs and I thought that I would never get out. Suddenly, a ray of hope as the darkness lightened and I staggered on towards the light, coming into the daylight with immense relief. A broad moat, surrounding a stone built mansion, in a part of the grounds, new to us, had to be waded across. In front of me, was a twenty foot high stone wall, with rope ladders leading up to a flat roof. As I reached the wall, a cadet dropped off the ladder, with a splash. I tried to climb, got about three rungs up and fell off, back into the water. Cadets were crawling out of the water, onto the lawn, in front of the house, which was occupied by the ATS girls, employed at the school. To them we must have looked a bit like Dragon fly larva, crawling out of a pond!
By this time, it was becoming obvious that something was seriously wrong and helpers came to give a hand. My next problem was that my skin was on fire, all over, and the mere touch of clothing was agony. I demanded that my clothes be taken off, a, similar demand coming from all my colleagues who had been through that bloody tunnel. We, eleven of us, filled the ward in the hospital, shivering violently even though we were covered in blankets and surrounded by hot water bottles, or lemonade bottles full of hot water, as there were not enough hot water bottles. After about an hour, as the shivering stopped, we all sat up and threw up.
We were kept in bed for a couple of days, during which more army doctors came to look at us. We were granted immediate sick leave, but as the whole OCTU was closing, we invalids got nine days leave and everybody else got seven days.
The reason for leaving Shrivenham was that it was being given to the Yanks. The agreement between Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt was that the Allied effort should be concentrated on Germany and the Japs left until later. So the Americans started to arrive in growing numbers and soon the saying was heard “Overpaid, over sexed and over here!” We left our state of the art barracks, which I believe is now the Royal Military Academy, for the wilds of West Wales.

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